THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

PLO groups. In 1993 he led the PLO to a peace agreement
with the Israeli government. Arafāt, Yitzhak Rabin, and
Shimon Peres of Israel were jointly awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1994.
Born Muh·ammad ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Qudwah al-H·usaynī,
Arafāt was one of seven children of a well-to-do merchant
whose wife was related to the anti-Zionist grand mufti of
Jerusalem, Amīn al-H·usaynī (d. 1974). The date and place
of ‘Arafāt’s birth are disputed. A birth certificate registered
in Cairo, Egypt, gives Aug. 24, 1929. Some sources, how-
ever, have supported ‘Arafāt’s claim to have been born in
Jerusalem on Aug. 4, 1929, and still others have given Gaza,
Palestine, as his birthplace. ‘Arafāt attended the University
of Cairo, graduating as a civil engineer. He joined the
Muslim Brotherhood and the Union of Palestinian
Students, of which he was president from 1952 to 1956, and
was commissioned into the Egyptian army. In 1956 he
served in the Suez campaign.
After Suez, ‘Arafāt went to Kuwait, where he worked
as an engineer and set up his own contracting firm. In
Kuwait he helped found Fatah, which was to become the
leading military component of the PLO. After being
named chairman of the PLO in 1969, he became com-
mander in chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces in
1971 and, two years later, head of the PLO’s political
department. Subsequently, he directed his efforts increas-
ingly toward political persuasion rather than confrontation
and terrorism against Israel. In November 1974 ‘Arafāt
became the first representative of a nongovernmental
organization—the PLO—to address a plenary session of
the United Nations General Assembly.
In 1982 ‘Arafāt became the target of criticism from
Syria and from various Syrian-supported factions within
the PLO. The criticisms escalated after the Israeli